Mandarin Duck.

Last week I watched "Andy and his Wild Adventures"- a show on CBeebies, with my daughter. Andy’s Wild Adventures is an innovative natural history series in which CBeebies presenter Andy Day invites children to join him on a wild animal adventure. Well the show I saw featured a beautiful bird - The Mandarin Duck. 

The beauty of this bird made me add it in my "Must see Birds 2013 book"

This week while I was walking along the stream on my way to office, I saw a small group of ducks where in I spotted two different ducks, not native to the UK. I immediately recognized  them, it was a pair of Mandarin Ducks. My happiness knew no bounds. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so I tried taking a picture with my phone but this was enough to scare the birds away and in a matter of  seconds they were out of sight .

I thought that they would never return but the next day I saw them again. Although shy, they did let me take some pictures of them.

Mandarin Duck - Male

These are wild Mandarin Ducks in Reading. They are not native to the UK but most probably have been bred in captivity and have later escaped.

I learnt that these ducks have a a sizable population in the UK, around 7000.

The adult male is a striking and unmistakable bird. It has a red bill, large white crescent above the eye and reddish face and "whiskers". The breast is purple with two vertical white bars, and the flanks ruddy, with two orange "sails" at the back. The female is similar to female Wood Duck, with a white eye-ring and stripe running back from the eye but is paler below, has a small white flank stripe and a pale tip to its bill.

I identified some good Stamps of the Mandarin Duck from my collection, which show these birds very clearly. The most common one is the stamp from Japan but it is brown on a blue background.

I like the Korean stamps which show the pair and they are the best Mandarin Duck stamps I have till date in my collection